Franky
In Cinema
Franky is a twenty-four year old italian kid who grew up in a family of former hippies and that, after his parents’ divorce, has followed his mother around exotic countries.
After inheriting his old and abandoned family house in Umbria, Franky decides to go back home, not for sentimental reasons, but to sell the property to the best bidder and enjoy the profits traveling the world and living carelessly.
Franky’s plans are immediately stopped by a series of unlucky coincidences and risky businesses that end him up in an improbable round of drugs and dangerous friendships.
Franky is the first featured film by director Joel Anitori who wrote, directed and co-produced it making, with his work, a real love letter to his region, Umbria, to its natural beauties and the stories that grow in them. Franky is also the first full length movie that Baburka co-produces. The director says, about the movie: “Franky is evidently the consequence of wanting to tell a story in Umbria. The protagonist is a young romantic anti-hero that looks for his place in the world in a society that has lost his values. His confusion is set on the backdrop of the beautiful Umbrian nature, unmovable and deaf to human drama”.
The Director
Joel Francesco Anitori is born in Cannes in 1975. Starts his artistic career as assistant to the contemporary artist Jannis Kounellis, whit whom he collaborates for more than 10 years, after which he approaches to the theater as assistant to the famous couple Carlo Quartucci and Carla Tatò. After graduating in directing at the NUCT in Rome, he directs three short movies, which precede his first featured movie, Franky (2016). His first short, ‘Gatto e Volpe’, is a western set in the music business; the second, ‘I Soliti Noti’ is a declared homage to Mario Monicelli’s masterpiece, in which three students steal some film and cameras to shoot their first movie. Thanks to a work experience as typographer in Tel Aviv, he shoots another short, a modern version of ‘Waiting for Godot’, in which a group of friends has to meet a friend who is apparently untraceable . To this day, Joel Anitori is working on the screenplays of two other films.